Trudeau and Kenney stake out their turf

On Wednesday morning, Montreal’s La Presse reported that Justin Trudeau will run for the leadership of Liberal Party, so there was a big gaggle of reporters outside the Liberal caucus room that afternoon when Trudeau showed up, smiling, wearing a blazer and open-necked shirt.

“J’ai rien a dire,” he said, in his bilingual way. “I have nothing to announce today. Glad to see everyone today, mais j’ai rien a dire.”

The Dauphin with the good left jab and widely admired hair had managed the situation perfectly, so that the ink-stained wretches of the Parliamentary Press Gallery had no choice but to trail after him, then troop back to their desk to write content-free stories about his candidacy, rolling their eyes at their keyboards.

Editors want these stories because readers want these stories, because Trudeau is interesting to people who are not always interested in politics. He is a lively, attractive young man, and people feel that they know him, since they knew his mother and father. And also he beat up that loud mouth senator, Patrick Brazeau.

In a business full of middle-aged drudges mouthing talking points, Trudeau stands out like a red rose on the lapel of a suit.

But Trudeau is a young, untested politician, seeking the leadership of the third party.

And his resume is slight, even compared with that of the current prime minister, whose resume was shorter than most of his predecessors.

The more significant political event on Wednesday was a vote by Trudeau’s potential future opponent: Jason Kenney.

Kenney, the minister of citizenship and immigration, stood with 86 other Conservatives and four Liberal MPs to vote for Motion 312, which called for a parliamentary committee to study the moment that life begins.

Kenney was the first cabinet minister to announce that he would vote for the motion. It seems likely that the government would have much preferred that he had not done so.

The chief government whip, Gordon O’Connor, the gruff former general whose job it is to get MPs to vote as they are told, made it clear in April that the government did not want MPs to vote for this motion.

“Society has moved on and I do not believe this proposal should proceed,” he said in the House. “As well, it is in opposition to our government’s position. Accordingly I will not support Motion No. 312. I will vote against it and I recommend that others oppose it.”

In the lobby, Tory staffers urged MPs not to defy the prime minister, but Kenney and 86 others did so.

This is likely giving Harper a splitting headache. He has opposed changing the abortion law since 2002, when he was facing Stockwell Day in the race for leadership of the Canadian Alliance, likely because he knows the position is so emotional and dangerous.

During the most recent election campaign, Harper told voters that voting Conservative would not lead to a new debate on the issue.

“That is my position, now and in the past five years as well, and as long as I am prime minister, we will not reopen the debate on abortion,” he said. “We will leave the law as it stands.”

I understood that to mean that he would prevent cabinet ministers from voting on private member’s bills, as Paul Martin whipped his cabinet on same-sex marriage.

Harper opted for quiet persuasion instead, and it worked. The motion was defeated 203-91, but his cabinet split, and Kenney voted against the stated position of the government.

Kenney is likely the most valuable member of Harper’s team. He works long, hard and effectively. Without his sustained political salesmanship to ethnic communities, Harper would not have won his majority.

And Kenney’s work in Citizenship and Immigration is some of the most difficult and impressive work by this government. Kenney has dived into the knotty files that the Liberals were afraid to touch, bringing some order to our chaotic immigration and refugee system and defending his actions forthrightly.

I think it says something good about Canadian attitudes towards multiculturalism and immigration that our conservative party is, in office, pro-immigration, and has succeeded in rebranding itself as the party of immigrants.

This has posed a challenge to the Liberals, who for many years warned voters that they couldn’t trust the Tories with power, because they were anti-immigrant and anti-abortion.

Two months before the last election, when Kenney released a new study guide for immigrants, it included strong condemnation of “barbaric cultural practices,” such as honour killings.

Trudeau condemned the language as unhelpful, at which point Kenney pounced.